Heirlooms
by anachronist-mirror
Summary: The origin of a myth passed down through generations. [originally posted on AO3] edit 6.21.2019 - Eventual Byakuran/Harry.
1. on matters of succession

**Disclaimer:** I don't own either HP or KHR

 **A/N:** Originally posted on AO3. Decided to x-post/mirror here.

* * *

The Master of Death and the Metal Craftsman talked in between working on the jars, about wave energy and magic, of ancestry and inheritance, of flames and magic bound in flesh, bone and blood.

"I hope I choose well when the time comes," Harry said, handling Talbot a crystal phial heavy with his blood as they waited for the glass of the Flame Accelerators to cool.

"I'm certain you will," Talbot replies, writing fluidly on a cord-bound ledger, the ivory dip pen pale against his tanned, weathered hand. "These things work out in the end, like with the Vongola and Shimon lines. Like with your ancestor's."

"Their succession differs from mine now," Harry, the last Peverell, pointed out wryly. "Wasn't that the point of digging up that Rite of Inheritance bit?"

"It's not so different," Talbot gently insisted, checking if the ink was dry before getting started on the first of the vial's three seals. "Just like how you were the one to prove yourself to the three items your ancestors left behind, only Tsuna and Enma were able to make the decisions needed to awaken in full the secrets of their blood. The ability to form a willing pact between the original line and a meritorious successor of sound mind and spirit - that was the main attraction for you, yes?"

The Master did not reply, and the Craftsman did not wait for a response to his reminder. After all, it was not their first time circling this topic.

Talbot hummed softly as he studied his work in the furnace's light, with Sight that extended beyond physical blindness. Satisfied, he moved on to the next strip, and picked up the conversation. "In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the young Vongola considers something like this in the future. He'll have to rework the Trials to suit the adaptive nature of the Vongola Gear."

Harry sighed. He leaned back, hands clasped in his lap, and looked out the window. The clear, dark night brought out the moon's brilliance, unhampered by the artificial glow of urban lighting. "You're probably right," he said after a while, idly tracing the knuckle of his ring finger, where the Stone had embedded itself, a mass of scarred skin serving as its setting.

The Hallows, as possessive, willful objects of power were wont to do, had fused themselves into his very blood, bone, and sinew. As long as he had them, he could not serve as anyone's Guardian, his natural Lightning aspect rendered void - yet another detail of his life lost before he even knew it was a choice, and he was far too resigned and tired to feel bitter about it.

(At least the next Master of Death would not end up like him - he sought out Talbot specifically for that purpose.)

He knew that the man meant to be his Sky suffered for it, unable to accept that in all possible futures, he would not be able to attain a Lightning Guardian through natural means. Not that they had gotten along in that future, the more his Sky's boredom and idle amusement took on shades of blood lust and domination. Harry, it seemed, was doomed to be stuck with potential or actual megalomaniacs for the rest of his long life, one way or the other.

It was this world's future Byakuran, the one Tsuna had stopped, that ultimately succeeded in killing him a scant few years after they graduated from university before establishing the Millefiore.

Harry would never mention how this third acceptance of death as the Last Peverell played part in the fulfillment of an old promise: the final binding and unification of the Hallows to the Master of Death. The Hallows transcended normal reality, and Harry's role as the Master of Death was absolute across parallel worlds - similar to how the Byakuran chosen by the Mare ring retained knowledge from his many counterparts. Those were secrets he'd take to his grave until his successor had need of them.

Yuni, who returned from non-existence thanks to some existential loophole Harry didn't want to think about, invited him over to Japan a week ago to give them a chance to properly talk. Harry, even with all his reservations, couldn't say no when he had already booked a flight to the country to visit Talbot - he knew the princess would track him down, and enlist Gamma's aid to do so. He could only hope this younger Byakuran, whose sanity was no longer at risk now that the Mare rings were sealed, would be less of a headache to talk to once this problem with the Arcobaleno pacifiers was over.

It was strange and more than a little annoying, how trinkets of legend caused problems for their wielders.

"Can I ask you something about the past, Talbot?"

"Only if it can be mine to share, young Peverell."

"What was the first Peverell actually like?"

Outside, the wind sighed gently, and the leaves rustled with it: a soft, tranquil moment in time.

"He loved his three sons dearly," Talbot began, remembrance wrapped about his being like a cloak as he finished the third seal. "He hailed from the Continent, seeking to escape friend and foe alike lest his own barely controllable magic destroy them. For a while he lived in happiness with his family, but his peace would not last for his enemies hungered after his ageless power - already, they had killed his wife when they found his home, and his youngest had barely escaped.

"Desperate to end the matter before his sons could meet the same fate, he sealed most of his life force and magical gifts in three objects he normally carried with him - his own wand, an uncut gem from his late wife, and his invisibility cloak - and invited his hunters to duel him at the bridge in the forest next to the village. He succeeded in killing them, at the cost of his own life.

"It was by chance that the brothers found him before he breathed his last, and he bequeathed to them his dying wish."

"And that was how you found them," Harry surmised.

"That was where I granted the chance to fulfill their father's desire," agreed Talbot, older than the Earthlings who stoked the Flames of will and life, as he applied the three strips of paper on the crystal's surface. "Not that the two elder brothers fully understood it, nor its price. You know the rest."

The matter was never spoken of again between the two.

When sunrise came, the Craftsman tucked the phial, now named _Apeiron_ , in the depths of his cloak, and he and Harry made their way to the park where Tsuna was set to lure Bermuda. Where the Skies of the Tri-Ni-Sette would congregate to break the cycle of the Arcobaleno and prevent the need for more human sacrifice.

It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one.


	2. Sidestory: Catching Up

**Heirlooms Sidestory: Catching Up**

* * *

"You almost died, you know, in the future."

Harry stilled, the pads of his fingers a hair's width from his teacup, and took care in keeping his expression neutral as he looked at Shoichi. As far as everyone knew, the Brit ended up in a water tank on life support, similar to how the Vendicare locked away their prisoners. Only Shoichi was privy to the details of the actual extraction. "Is that what you remember from this world?"

"Among others." Shoichi gently massaged his belly as he drank his own tea, letting the warmth soothe his stomach ache. Conversations like this were anxiety-inducing and painful for the ginger-haired teen, even five years after having memories of that terrible future and the assortment of other worlds he ended up in. "You were usually hidden at the Italy base or somewhere he could keep a closer eye on you, until they moved the main operation to Namimori."

Across him, the dark-haired teen said nothing, and merely sipped his matcha.

Shoichi cleared his throat. "In this world, I had to persuade Squalo-san to let me talk to Kikyo before the Varia shipped him overseas. Of all places, Byakuran buried your tank in a frozen lake far from Millefiore's Hokkaido branch. The life support showed signs of tampering when we got there. It was difficult to get you out and I was afraid we didn't get there on time." The ginger-haired boy swallowed, digging his fingers in his waist to pull him through a really intense stomach cramp. "You - you still had a pulse. Barely there, but you had a pulse."

Shoichi didn't mention that Harry - both the present and future one - looked exactly the same where it counted. However, if his reclusive friend didn't want to talk about that, it was fine. He knew the Brit kept a low profile for his own reasons and disliked being called out for the many oddities that happened to him.

He didn't know if Harry was able to stave off Byakuran's curiosity. Even if the Italian no longer had a cruel, exploitative edge, he still had the knack for getting under people's skin while he pestered them with questions when he deemed something more than a passive interest. Harry's physical appearance would definitely fall under that category, and Byakuran's persistence matched up with Harry's stubbornness.

"Ah." The dark-haired teen looked down at his cup, no doubt wishing he'd have gotten black tea instead of matcha. The caffeine would have been better for this kind of conversation. Unfortunately, they'd have to make do with sugar, and he gently nudged the plate of sweets closer to Shoichi. "He only really needed me to stay away and not be awake until he was done destroying things."

"He used to brag about wanting to see the shock on your face once he'd won. I'm still not fully sure why he did it to be honest - it's overkill for a reaction to a couple of arguments back at uni." Shoichi reached for one of the round yellow-colored candies, and paused. "The older me was sorry, by the way. For not noticing you disappeared sooner."

"Not your fault." Harry's tone held an edge of sternness. "I wasn't exactly in touch with anyone after we graduated and… well." He huffed. "My best guess is that he saw something in one world or the other. Not that it matters now, when he can't do that anymore.'

"Yeah." Shoichi sighed. "Yeah, you're right. Do you know though, what made this world different?"

"Ah. That." Harry tugged at the length of hair on the right side of his face, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Found out that someone he was trying to kill was actually a cousin of mine - from a disowned branch of my father's side, several times removed. Very distant, but still showed signs of sharing a few family… traits."

Shoichi closed his eyes. It wasn't hard to figure out what happened next - Harry would go to great lengths to keep those he cared for safe, especially if he thought this mysterious relative was the agreeable sort. "Well? Who is it?"

The resulting grin on Harry's face was a strange mix of amusement, embarrassment, and pride. "Skull. Turns out almost getting killed on a yearly basis is a shared experience."

Shoichi ran a hand down his face. Of _course_ Harry's cousin just had to be one of the ex-Arcobaleno. He'd heard that the Cloud eluded capture before Byakuran set Glo Xinia on his trail.

"Could've told me when you dropped off your friend's research notes on containment fields before disappearing," he finally said with a resigned shake of his head. "Tell me Skull knows, at least?"

It was only later that Shoichi realized something that put him through another round of miserable cramping. Skull only survived his crazy antics by using his Cloud flames to propagate undamaged cells, speeding up his recovery. Harry, on the other hand, was an _inactive Lightning_.

So how was it that Shoichi found him in a defective tank without signs of hypothermia and frostbite?


	3. flesh, bone, marrow (i)

**A/N:** This is part of a draft that's been hanging around since I wrote the first two parts.

Now with a part 2, because details

 **i. then**

As Byakuran studied Harry's unchanging features from outside the capsule, he was reminded of how similar this was to the times he tolerated Shouichi's lies.

In all honesty, he knew he could've taken care of this sooner. However, no matter how much he lost pieces himself and gained others whenever he crossed worlds, something always stayed his hand before his patchwork soul could even finish the thought of just brainwashing the two of them to get it over with.

At the end of it all, both Harry and Shoichi were his. Byakuran could never truly forget how much fun he had dragging Shoichi around town, poking and prodding and prying until he got a wealth of ideas and secrets and inventions. Were it not for him, Shoichi would never have pushed himself as hard, and that brilliant mind would've been wasted on utterly boring and inconsequential projects.

And Harry...

There was negative space in where their bond was supposed to be. At first, Byakuran thought the strange prickle in his chest wasn't anything special, a consequence of long days spent waiting for classes to end so he could look for actual entertainment with those two. Then, sometime after exam week, he urged Shoichi to include Harry in one experiment with a prototype for modern Flame technology, just for fun. Lo and behold, the man was an inactive Lightning.

Byakuran had been delighted at first. He rather liked Harry, that gutsy, reckless boy who put up with him and his whimsy - they got into bizarre situations more often than not (Harry swore he wasn't doing it on purpose, and Byakuran laughed even after being shoved off the couch), and they helped each other out of a sundry of messes. The other teen was, as far as Byakuran was concerned, good guardian material.

When a flame bond failed to form, however, that was the beginning of their fallout. Byakuran never took well to being denied.

"Inactive" was was a convenient yet misleading placeholder for the actual phenomenon. As new as Byakuran was at the time to the whole Flame deal, he could sense something was off with Harry's, and this observation was something he kept to himself. It was like reaching out to an outstretched hand, only to find that the distance remained the same no matter how fast he ran.

In other words, he had been rejected by the same person over and over and over again across a multitude of worlds, and the fraying of his personality as a cost of dimension travel didn't help matters. Harry - his original Harry and all the other ones his alternate selves spoke to since - never mentioned he noticed anything strange, before his momentary disappearance after their graduation and his subsequent re-emergence as a guest of the Giglio Nero famiglia.

(He remembered Harry's transformation in one. They were in a warzone, beams of light being shot from all directions, and Harry had turned into a majestic feathered serpant, calling in the winds and rain for the sake of a forced ceasefire.

Byakuran, awestruck, wondered if his Harry could manage the same.

He never did find out.)

Funny how their first encounter in years was also their most heated argument over the Gesso's direction. His old friend had always found Byakuran's brand of meanness disagreeable.

Well, that was that. Byakuran could not help who he was, nor would he apologize for his actions or admit to regrets, if he had any at all. The same went for the man he once knew, who now lay in artificial sleep. Harry, he knew, would've torn down the base had he been awake, all for the sake of a distant cousin he hadn't even introduced himself to.

So much for Harry's little speech on blood ties not mattering that much in the face of loyalty. Hadn't Byakuran tried to gain it?

(It had not been in a way Harry approved of, and Byakuran knew it.)

"You know where to drop that off." Byakuran tore his gaze from the sleeping man to look at the officer next to him. The amiable smile on his lips widened when the man's trembling worsened. "Make sure it isn't damaged in the process, hmm~? I'll be very, very displeased if someone interrupted his beauty sleep."

The man, now ten shades paler, managed a snappy salute. "Y-yessir!"

It was fascinating, how something as visceral as terror inspired obedience in the weak.

So off Harry went, and Byakuran popped a marshmallow in his mouth on his way to R&D.

That was that. Maybe now, between subjugating the other famiglias and taking the Tri-Ni-Sette for himself, he would be truly at peace.

(Absorbing all those flames during the fight with Tsuna made it worse.

He had never been complete.

Never will be.

That missing link had continued to gnaw his soul until the day he died.)

 **ii. now**

"Tsuna," Yuni said with a secretive smile as she guided him through the house earlier. "There's someone we'd like you to meet."

Tsuna gaped at the exhausted foreign-looking teen smiling at him from across the table. Then he remembered his manners and closed his mouth before Reborn dive kicked him from some convenient air vent.

"Sorry about this," the new person said with a yawn and a distracted reach for the nearby plate of biscuits. "My body clock's still messed up from the flight. Would've held this off to when you weren't busy - I mean, don't get me wrong, it's nice to finally meet you - but Yuni insisted it had to be now. I just wish the circumstances weren't as urgent."

When Yuni asked him if he had time to for a private conversation, being left in a sitting room with a complete stranger a cheerful request to 'please get along well' wasn't what Tsuna had expected. Not now, or ever, especially in the middle of the Representative Battle.

As if anything in his life went the way he expected it to.

"Um," he started, then stopped.

Right. He could do this. Tsuna gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile and tried to get his mouth to form a polite greeting, but it got caught somewhere in between despairing over more people getting dragged into this mess and quiet panic. He couldn't remember if he's seen this guy anywhere at all, and this was clearly important to Yuni if she asked for them to get to know each other. Would she be angry if he made a terrible first impression?

"Hi. You're a friend of Yuni, Potter-san..?"

"Yeah." There was a slight pause before Potter decided to elaborate. "She and Byakuran talked quite a bit about you, then and now."

"O-oh!" Tsuna didn't know if he should be concerned that this person knew Byakuran, or that Byakuran was talking about him. The ex-Millefiore's interest in anything meant something terrible was about to happen - but then again, he had helped Yamamoto this time around, hadn't he? And Yuni didn't look uncomfortable next to him this time around, too. "So. Ah. They thought I could help you with something?"

He couldn't help but squeak out those last words because that was apparently his life, though Potter, with how he gave a tired laugh, might as well have heard please don't kill me.

"Something like that." Potter gave him a rueful smile, and Tsuna got the impression the other was waiting for a particular reaction. "More like, they knew I had a problem to deal with, and thought that solving it'll help with whatever's going on here. But before that -"

Potter ran a hand down his face, sighing, and spoke as if he was confessing to an old grief.

"Thanks for stopping Byakuran in the future."

"...I'm sorry?"

"The idiot really didn't care about how unendingly unstable he'd made everything." The teen closed his eyes briefly, letting himself sink into the armchair. "Sorry, I'm probably not making sense, am I? Probably should've gotten Shouichi to explain this bit. He's told you about why he helped the future you, yeah?"

Tsuna stared, bewildered. Potter felt sincere, but that didn't answer a million other questions, like how Irie was even involved. "Um. Yes?"

"Good." Potter gave Tsuna an apologetic look and continued to speak, as if he was afraid to lose steam. "Look, it's not like I want to bring up painful memories for anyone - you and Yuni most of all, because the both of you lost a lot before you found a way to fix this - but you have to understand: the you and the Yuni of now only went through the experiences of one world. Shoichi and I saw several. Those were shitty times to live in, and if I could scrub my brain of how some of those timelines ended, I would."

There was a story there, full of grief and frustration. Tsuna didn't doubt that Potter tried to be a good friend, and it was easy to guess that Byakuran probably hated being told off and went off to do things on his own. Or something like that.

"Now I can't even punch this present Byakuran's face in because he literally hasn't done anything yet," Potter was now saying. "Him getting to know you and Yuni sooner rather than later almost guarantees that even if the universe does get destroyed in the future, it won't be because he was bored. So, yeah. Thanks."

Thanks for helping him when I couldn't.

Potter rubbed his neck awkwardly.

Now, Tsuna looked. Really looked at him, with eyes of burning amber.

(Resting on Potter's middle knuckle was a ring - a tarnished thick band, too aged and plain in comparison to the other Flame or Famiglia rings he's seen. Set on its center was an opaque, round stone with a crack down the middle. Something about the piece of jewelery nagged at Tsuna's Intuition - it was important and not about the Tri-Ni-Sette for once, but there were other things to focus on at the moment.)

"I'm glad he has a second chance," he said, calmer than he was before, but no less earnest. This was important to say right now, and Tsuna's intuition never had failed him before. "This also means he can be close to others again, even those he's hurt before."

Potter, who had sat upright when he noticed Tsuna's change in demeanor, froze.

Tsuna scratched his chin. "You know, I don't think Byakuran really talks to people that much other than Yuni, Irie, and the Wreaths. I also bet that, in the future, there was a point when he stopped sharing important things about himself because his goals took over. Anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm sure he probably misses you, too."

"...oh." Potter still looked out of it, holding up a biscuit that never reached his mouth. "Was that why my hotel room was flooded with feathers and marshmallows the other day? I thought a chicken broke in."

It was Tsuna's turn to stare.

"- hieee!?"


	4. flesh, bone, marrow (ii)

**iii. just before**

When he came to, he had a splitting headache, his kitchen was a scorched disaster zone, his breakfast smelled like a sewer, and his right arm felt like molten lava had replaced his blood.

Harry groaned and rubbed his face with his free hand. That earthquake sure had done a number on his head. He was better off believing that the things he saw were all part of one horrifically long lucid nightmare, except the Sky flames that had wrapped around him towards the end, long after his dream - future? - self died was a hug from a friend.

Don't be a stranger, Harry, Yuni said as he walked with her shade along the empty train station of In-Between. Talbot, who was more than Talbot in that place, paced alongside them. Gamma, long resolved to stay with her, comfortably trailed a few steps behind. When time was at a standstill because one was dead, there was no need to hurry along. We have a better chance to make things right.

"I know," he groaned in the otherwise silent kitchen, exhausted with a thousand years' worth of burdens. "Believe me, I know."

He didn't need to check his throbbing hand nor the burning center of his chest to see the new additions to his body: the Stone embedded in thick scar tissue, leaking black Flame; and the symbol of the Deathly Hallows tattooed to his skin.

000

"This came for you," Hermione said crossly, dumping a letter on his lap before sitting beside him. "I've already checked it for curses."

Covered from head to toe with Warming and Impervius charms, they were on a Transfigured bench outside Grimmauld Place while Ron, Bill, and George checked the house for any residual curses or wards failing. Apparently, they'd been trying to get in all week since the earthquake last week. Kreacher showed up at the Burrow when even he couldn't get through the wards, and no one else could be called because of the new Fidelius spell Harry had put in place since he moved in.

Flames clashed horribly with magic, it seemed. Or perhaps that was just the net effect of having the wards take a hit from a high surge of energy.

Given the circumstances, he couldn't blame Hermione for being irritated. They'd all been worried, and it hadn't helped that Kreacher alternated between being smug about his master's misfortune and beating his head with a cooking pot.

"Thanks," he said, glancing at the sender for show before pocketing it with a resigned sigh. The missive was swimming in two distinctly strong Sky flames: Yuni's, and the letter's sender, her mother Aria. Later, he'd think about how his old (future?) friend found him, but for now - "Anyone figure out what caused the earthquake?"

Of course, he already knew precisely what triggered it. On the other hand, Harry had been living in relative seclusion since he discovered his non-aging problem a few years ago, and he stuck to getting news on the Wizarding World from his friends while he tried looking for a variety of hobbies. Things to learn. Time better spent away from the media circus.

As a twenty-five year old wizard permanently stuck in a seventeen-year-old body, the possibilities were endless as long as he didn't have to worry financing his pursuits. Fortunately, his inherited fortune from his parents and Sirius was substantial, and Harry spending a childhood of thinking he didn't own anything translated to practicality to the point of excessive frugality for particular things.

(His friends were working on getting him unstuck from that last point. The sort of ingredients he ordered via owl post these days was a marked improvement to what he settled with after the Battle.)

Given his recent reluctance to read the news, Harry showing signs of being updated so soon after waking up from his week-long nap was a dead giveaway that something was different.

"For the tenth time already, no. And don't change the subject." Hermione gave his swollen hand a pointed look: Harry had refused to take off the ring with the Stone. If she lost a week she could've spent fussing over his unconscious self, she was making up for it in spades now. "Are you sure it's not from a spell that backfired? Faulty wards? Potion accidents?"

That last one, in particular, was said with a hard, suspicious tone that could've scorched the snowfall about them. Staying in contact with Neville and Luna meant he had access to ethically-sourced potions ingredients, in return for the occasional plant- or -creature sitting job. While he had no use for ingredients, Harry ended up liking being a part-time custodian for various flora and fauna, even if it sometimes meant dealing with ill-informed poachers during transit, or fur mixing with volatile cleaning potions.

Then there was that one memorable time Kreacher somehow found a chicken to deal with an Egyptian cockatrice that kept dragging in mud. Would've caused an international incident, had it worked.

"I'm sure," Harry exhaled, running a tired hand down his face. On his finger was a ring - or, more specifically, a glamour showing a metal band instead of scar tissue. Antique rings wouldn't raise too many eyebrows, unlike cracked stones burrowed deep in flesh.

Funny how, just last week, the old him wouldn't have hesitated to show his friend these changes, all the while freaking out about the strangeness that was his life. That was how he reacted the first time, in that frantic search on ways to hide Skull from Byakuran.

000

The second letter arrived the week after.

Harry didn't need to even look at the delivery moth (Torikabuto's, boy did the man move fast to regain his Elements) to know it was from Byakuran. The quality of the stationary already gave him away: pearly white, floral patterned, expensive, and surprisingly tasteful.

With a sharp pang, he realized what this reminded him of: the genuinely cheerful Byakuran of old, before his obsession with multiple worlds even began and his memories shifted.

The dark Flame from the Stone stirred. Harry absentmindedly shook his hand to get rid of it.

Yuni had restored Harry's memories in such poignant detail that it hurt to remember. Once upon a time - the first time - Byakuran had been charming and light, even genuine, foolish in his confidence and unwavering in his resolve. How easy Harry and Shoichi been drawn into that orbit, when Byakuran made an unfailing amount of sense as he challenged how the world was and what possibilities awaited them in discovery.

A visionary. He was a Sky worth following, had Harry been aware of Flames then.

In that - this - first world's future, they met in an American university. Harry had attended on a whim, fascinated with how Muggle technology was progressing after following a clean energy non-profit his solicitor invested in. In the end, he managed to take up an Engineering course after two years' worth of crash courses, field trips to power plants, visits to beneficiary communities, vials of wit-sharpening potions, headaches, and sleepless nights.

It wasn't as if he had much of a social life those days. All his friends were hitting their thirties and, while they all made it a point to have Sunday dinners together, it was clear they were moving on in life. Hermione was still involved with the Ministry, Ron was one of the top Aurors and due for a promotion, Neville had started teaching at Hogwarts, and both Ginny and Luna were out of the country more often than not: the former for competitive Quidditch, and the latter pursuing breakthroughs in Magizoology.

They'd all done well for themselves, and Harry was proud of them.

As far as he could tell in those days, Byakuran wasn't aware where his roommate vanished off to family dinners on the weekends, nor did he ask. The memories he'd assimilated after his third death, however, told a different story. If Byakuran could visit parallel worlds, what stopped him from meeting a version of Harry who'd told him of magic?

(Harry always took for granted how no one in the mafia asked about his appearance. That had bit him in the ass, even if he didn't know it yet.)

Yuni's visions confirmed what he suspected. Yuni's visions confirmed a lot of things, starting with why the memories he assimilated from his other selves only reached up to a certain point. In all other worlds, there had not been a need for a Master of Death, for there were no living left to die.

The realization, at least, made him a little more sympathetic to Byakuran's plight. After his third acceptance from the Hallows, there was now only one Harry Potter across all worlds. His transformation into the Master of Death afforded him, amongst other things, the retention of his own sanity, but Byakuran was only human, and there was only so much strain the mind and soul could take before it fractured.

His newfound understanding, however, didn't mean he could easily forgive that future Byakuran for all the hurt he caused. Not when Harry now knew in exacting detail how much death his would-be Sky had brought after his death.

On the other hand.

(The letter on the table was pristine and white, and the warmth of Byakuran's Flames called.)

On the other hand.

(A better chance, Yuni had said. Behind her, Gamma, now older after Harry's death, looked at peace.)

With a heavy sigh, Harry opened the envelope, gritting his teeth when the nerves of his right hand were flooded with pain, centered on the Stone in his knuckle.

Stupid, possessive Hallows.

 _Ha-chan,_

 _You still like treacle tarts, right? Our old place isn't open yet, but I know somewhere else just as good!_

 _Let me know when you're ready, and I'll come pick you up._

 _I'll wait for you._

No signature. That only meant Byakuran, too, wasn't sure where they stood, but didn't want to declare that in writing. Harry could almost picture him sprawled on the sofa, head pillowed on his arm, not seeing the ceiling as he idly caught marshmallows in his mouth, that brilliant mind of his mapping out how Harry would react to this word or that, pen and paper lying untouched on the coffee table.

Yeah. Okay. They did have a lot to talk about, and just one meeting wasn't enough.

Did Harry want to?

Would it be fair to this current Byakuran, who technically hasn't gone on his crime spree yet?

Dying and death and remembering was only a short time for Harry, but Byakuran had years to forget all about dumping him in a tank and leaving him to rot. Plus, why would his present self even regret anything, when he probably didn't have the same emotional attachments the older Byakuran had? He could simply have chosen to forget Harry existed; certainly, he was smart enough to make sure their paths never crossed.

Maybe because, really, Byakuran was a Sky, and he wanted to call Harry home in spite -

As if that had worked out the last time. Harry wasn't so ignorant now to not know that the lack of harmonization made things worse.

Great. Just great.

He needed Shoichi for this. That was somehow an easier prospect, even if it turned out they were both working on separate things to help Byakuran - how did it come to the point they hadn't trusted each other? Then he remembered his friend was probably around thirteen at the present, so if there was anyone doing the visiting, it'd be Harry.

Groaning, Harry stuffed the letter in his pocket with his other hand, expensive paper be damned, and went to the medicine cupboard for Butterfly Weed balm. Thin black lines mapping out his nerves had spread from the ring, creeping up his elbow from his pain-numb fingers.

It wasn't enough to dwarf the old (new?) ache in his chest, when he remembered what happened the last time.

000

At the end of that long month, the only sane person he could talk to was Luna.

"I don't know," he groaned, burying his face on his hand. They were at the porch of the Scamanders' cottage in Wales, where Luna and Rolf staying in the country for a week after their latest working vacation in Indonesia. The estate they were on was charmed several generations ago to be stuck in some perpetual summer, and the couple had plans to convert it into a sanctuary for rescued creatures.

"You won't until you do," she replied, and the sunburns on her skin looked painful. Those hadn't dampened her natural cheer, and her fiance Rolf applied salve om her shoulders as if this was an everyday occurrence. It probably was, whenever they visited the tropics. "Nothing wrong with visiting, Harry. Or being charmed by him again, for that matter."

"Luna," Harry began, exasperated, new-old grief stirring in his chest, but she patted his arm.

"Yuni told me about the first fallout." That made a horrifying amount of sense, because Harry originally got in touch with Yuni through Luna. Looks like he wasn't the only one who got at least a letter. "Not everything, just the general details. It won't just be you this time around, if he gets a taste for power again."

True, he had to concede. Luna wasn't done, though.

"Maybe you won't even have to fight about that again." She gently squeezed his hand, and Harry was reminded of one summer in Italy, in the Giglio Nero estate. Were all clairvoyants somehow connected with one another through time and space? Or did they act the way they did, because they saw the same goodness and cruelty humans were capable of? "Your Sky no longer has to drift away, rooted as he is now to this world. Neither of you have to chase each other anymore, because both of you are here."

"...Luna." Harry's face crumpled, hidden by his fingers.

Rolf, done with the cream, kissed the top of Luna's head and murmured something in her ear. She nodded, smiling at him in thanks, and watched as her fiance entered the cottage to give them privacy.

It was a nice afternoon, the rolling fields about them bright and green. A gentle breeze picked up, and it was as comforting as Luna's hand on his.

Here was the truth of the matter: Harry, like many others except for Shoichi, hadn't noticed Byakuran slipping away until it was too late, and he had been blinded by his fondness for the man. In the future, he'd often wondered if there was something else he could've done instead of just picking a fight and storming out after.

Getting involved with the Giglio Nero famiglia had been his attempt to see if he could either talk or stop Byakuran. But it wasn't enough.

"Why did you introduce me to Yuni?"

That had been a cruel move, if Luna knew what was going to happen. How it all ended.

"My future self thought it was for the best." Luna neither moved closer nor leaned back. This wasn't something she'd done for the Greater Good, unlike Dumbledore. Harry could tell, but the acknowledgment still stung. "This was the only world where your meeting would have an impact, even if all your other selves know him one way or another."

"Because this is the one where Vongola had a shot at success," Harry guessed with an uncomfortable twist in his gut.

"Yes. And because of that win, everyone can move forward." Luna shifted her gaze from him to the wide, open field. "Humans experience time sequentially. That means everything in that future is part of your past, even if it'll never happen now. You learned a lot from those experiences, from doing things. Being happy. Being sad and betrayed and lonely, and trying to make things better in spite of that because you care. You're better equipped to handling those loose ends now, don't you think? Especially after Yuni and her friends sealed the Mare rings away, so he can't go down that path ever again."

She brushed her thumb on his knuckle, where the scar tissue started. Harry never saw the need to hide the Hallows around her even when the Stone was just a ring, and they both trusted Rolf to keep this between the three of them.

Luna had seen Harry drifting away in his seclusion and, in her own way, tried to help him find the solution.

It was all a bit too much to wrap his head around at the moment, this wild ride of time travel, multiple dimensions, the Hallows, Byakuran. Neither was this over, with how the Stone kept on reacting to Byakuran's flame signature; it wasn't like this back at university.

They lapsed into silence. Harry swallowed, trying to get ahold of himself - it was hard to keep his voice steady, nor could he figure out what to say first, if anything at all.

(That was fine. The great thing about Luna was that she didn't mind. Talking wasn't the only thing they could do as friends, after all, and they could both just sit outside and enjoy this pocket of summer in wintertime.)

000

By the time he received an invitation from Yuni, a full two months had passed, and he already had an appointment with Talbot, whom Harry learned was called Talbot these days.

He didn't know if he was ready nor did he figure out what words to say, but he knew he had to go. Both Yuni and Talbot were dropping hints, and Harry would've been massively concerned if he hadn't been known how those two operated.

Not to mention, there was the matter of Aria's letter. To think there'd be a day he'd see a prophecy that didn't have him grasping the short end of the stick. What he could only hope for was that he'd interpreted it correctly, or he'd be back to square one.

It was time.

(In those two months, Harry had not gotten another letter from Byakuran. Knowing how persistent the man usually was when he had a goal in mind, Harry appreciated the space.

Now, only if he could figure out why he kept on finding sweets in his pockets on occasion. Did Teddy keep on forgetting them there whenever Andromeda brought him over for a visit? Maybe he could bring him back a souvenir of sorts from Japan. The Muggle side, as far as Harry knew, was heavily commercialized, surely they had something angel themed to go with Teddy's latest fascination.)


	5. flesh, bone, marrow (iii)

**A/N:** Woo backstory time. Maybe I didn't miss anything? :x

Some of the backstory dialogue's taken word for word from the anime fan sub. You'll know which ones when you see them.

* * *

 **iv. what might have been**

 _Byakuran dreamt of fire and the sky._

"I can feel you shaking from over here." Byakuran gave his defeated opponent a cool look, confident in his victory. Young Tsunayoshi might've woken up thanks to the arcobaleno Reborn's little pep talk, but Byakuran still had - would always have - the upper hand. "How unlucky for you to wake up under these hopeless circumstances. Ah, but I suppose you haven't had any luck since you entered middle school."

Recounting the fallen child's colorful school years was easy. Byakuran had taken the time to study the young Vongola's strategies across dimensions, and he could remember the major variances between incarnations. However, there were some things that remained the same: this was a boy who, in his early years, lacked strength. Always pushed to fight, always gullible, always defeated by the weakness of his own heart. In Byakuran's world of worlds, cunning, violence and dominion were the keys to victory.

The Don of the present thought his younger self would succeed. It was such a stupid move, even accounting for the number of surprises Tsunayoshi threw his way in the past few weeks. Byakuran was never without a trump card. He was all the Byakuran across multiple timelines, and they were all him. In essence, the Mare ring granted him access to the most adaptable supercomputer - himself and his genius intellect, multiplied by the thousands every time he went into his cocoon.

"Your luck completely ran out once you arrived in this time." He did not pity the boy in front of him. They were long past the stage of negotiation, and Tsunayoshi chose to rebel. Now, he paid the price. "If you hadn't been brought here, you wouldn't have had to suffer. It makes you curse your own fate, doesn't it?"

"No," the boy said with a troubled expression as he picked himself off the ground. "That's not entirely true."

Oya. And here Byakuran thought the boy would agree, even if Tsunayoshi didn't outright admit it. "Hmm?"

"It's true that the future caused me fear, pain, and worry, and I was only truly happy for a brief time, but now." He watched impassively as Tsunayoshi struggled with his words. Maybe this time, the boy would say something of interest. "Now I understand. You take the good with the bad. I consider everything that has happened to be precious moments of my life."

Sentimental and boring. Nothing new at all. This was similar to all the other speeches he'd heard before, even in the worlds where Vongola was betrayed by close and trusted allies.

Byakuran smiled and gathered a measure of Flame between his fingers. One final kill, and he'd have won. Now, and forever.

The future was in his hands.

The child could take his naive, groundless optimism with him to the grave.

 _Of technology and power._

The Millefiore was more than just a famiglia. They were a technological empire that rivaled the Vongola, spitting in the face of tradition in the scant few years they've been around, and those who looked at them as young upstarts had been corrected and dealt with accordingly.

Way too easy. All he had to do now was collect the Tri-Ni-Sette, and he'd have won the game.

"Byakuran-sama." Kikyo knelt in front of him to deliver his report. "We have located Torikabuto's next host. Assimilation is in progress, ETA of transit in twenty hours."

Byakuran raised his eyebrows, marshmallow pressed to his lips in a halted bite. "That long, eh?"

"For the sake of not bringing loose ends that might inconvenience you, Torikabuto wished to completely subdue his host."

Having reliable elements who could think was refreshing, moreso when he knew his Guardians wouldn't betray him.

Kikyo's next question, however, was not so pleasant.

"With six of us secure - Byakuran-sama, may I have your permission to search for and secure your Lightning?"

"Nah," Byakuran replied lightly, tone at odds with the spike of irritation that burst through him. Why must this topic always return? "There are better uses for your time, Kikyo."

His Cloud looked puzzled. "Oho? Then, Byakuran-sama, you've found them?"

"Best leave that to me." His gaze slid to Kikyo from his periphery, the beginnings of a cruel smile curving his mouth. Funny, how the usually composed man before him now looked like he just stepped on cracked glass and was trying to hide it. "You still have to oversee your division, don't you?"

"Pardo -" Kikyo seemed to get the idea when Byakuran's fingers tightened around the marshmallow, and quickly switched tracks. "O - of course. As you command."

He hastily left the room, shoulder's stiff, aware that Byakuran kept an eye on him.

That was the first and last time Kikyo brought up the matter.

Byakuran wasn't lying, either. Ghost would be brought into this world soon, and he'd have no use for that beautiful unchanging being ever slumbering, alone and forgotten, at the bottom of an arctic lake in northern Japan.

The world turned with the wheels of progress. Thus vanished the fae and fae-like men, unreachable and ethereal.

(See, Harry? He never needed you.)

 _Of discoveries and games._

"So you want a show." Shoichi looked up from his book, unimpressed. "Why not keep it to VR?"

"Ah, Shou-chan, where's the fun in that?" Byakuran leaned forward, resting his weight on the two hind legs of his now tipping chair. The library had few people around in the summer, and his Harry wasn't due back from England for another week. They wouldn't be disturbed. "The entire point is to have a comprehensive contest with full immersion. Think of it like a paintball match, but with tech."

"Right," Shoichi said. He still wasn't convinced, but his next few questions were good indicators he could be swayed. "You'll get bored before this is even finished. Where will you find contestants anyway? Funding? Don't tell me you plan to sell this off to some TV station if it works; you hate that."

His friend wasn't wrong. Handing Choice over to some media exec would make the game less appealing to him. For one, they'd miss the entire point of the game, taking away the fun parts and throwing in tasteless generic mechanics to make it more 'marketable' for a brainless audience. People really didn't know what they were missing out on, and that was their loss.

On the other hand, he couldn't exactly explain why he was into this particular venture for the long term.

Lucky him, he knew which switches to flip. Particularly the ones that caused stomach cramps preceding important decisions.

"None of that. But don't you want to see if this works?" He tapped one of the sketches he placed in front of Shoichi earlier. "You're a genius, Sho-chan. Let me worry about the funding. You know you can do more, if you have everything at your disposal."

Silence. Shoichi's eyes were unreadable, the afternoon light bouncing off his glasses as he finally picked up the designs.

"Having unlimited resources doesn't equate to excellence," he finally said, swallowing. "Efficiency, on the other hand... mind if I think about this first and look over these?"

"Go ahead," Byakuran hummed, already knowing Shoichi would say yes, in spite of how uncertain he sounded. If there was one thing music and engineering had in common, it was the creative freedom to translate concepts and passion into reality. "Take all the time you need."

 _Of gifts and knowledge_

"Mare ring?"

"We've finally found the rightful bearer of the Mare ring." The two women dressed in long gray hooded robes looked distinctly out of place on university grounds. If they were from some convent or the other, it wasn't one Byakuran could recognize. "You are fit to bear the treasure of this world, the Mare ring."

"And?" He wasn't about to take candy from just anyone. Just what was their selection process? "Who are you?"

"We are a 'thought' in your life. We bring revelations to the chosen."

Byakuran laughed. It sounded like mystical bullshit. Were it not for his experience the other day, he wouldn't have even stayed long enough to listen, never mind take them seriously.

Neither could he deny the feeling of _rightness_ spreading from his chest, stirring the moment they presented him with the ring. All was not right with the world, but it would be.

He could fix it. There was nothing he couldn't solve or win.

The women didn't look pleased with his reaction. "What's so funny?"

"Took you long enough." The ring flooded him with warmth. His newfound abilities pointed to the fact he was special. Why _hadn't_ they found him sooner? "I've been waiting for something crazy like this to happen, since I lost faith in the real world long ago. I've never been able to stand the life of a human being. Everywhere I looked, people and society were but a backdrop. It became clear after I travelled to a parallel world a few days ago. I'm just a mind that's been trapped inside a game."

The more he thought about it, the more dissatisfied he was. Life shouldn't be pre-programmed, yet everyone thought it that way. Go to school, get a job, get a promotion, retire with a fat paycheck and bonuses, have a family at some point in between, grow old, and die. Too cut and dry. Canned, shipped all over with the same stupid label of success. Those who didn't make it got tossed out. Even if Byakuran was highly capable and destined for greatness, why should he have only one option?

"You're free to think what you want," said one. "Do you have the resolve to bear this Mare ring," asked the other.

"Of course. I'll take any key item that makes this world more fun. By the way, I'll be making full use of this ring. Hmm, I might even dabble in nonsense like global war and world domination. Will you punish me?"

At the time, he never seriously meant to do anything of the sort. Byakuran was just fishing for the rules of the game, including whatever he could accomplish with his newly acquired item.

"We will never interfere." The girl lifted her face just enough for Byakuran to see the mask over her eyes. So did her twin. "However, if you consider this to be a game,"

"There are two other elements of Sky beside that ring," said the other.

"In other words, don't forget there are two other players," her twin concluded.

If they meant to dissuade him, it didn't work. In fact, their words had a completely opposite effect.

"That's great!" Byakuran hadn't felt this invigorated for a long, long time. A new game, an unexplored board, so many new things to uncover. Maybe even new people to meet who thought like him. Ha-chan and Sho-chan were great, but they didn't get him, not really. "This wouldn't be too much of a game if I didn't have any rivals."

Harry and Shoichi wouldn't understand how disenchanted he was with a lot of things. Thinking of life as a game was alien to most, he was aware, and he believed they'd be weirded out, especially Harry. As endearing as the other's confusion might be, Byakuran estimated horror would follow soon after, once the implications sank in.

Living was cheap when everything was accessible. Harry would protest as he always did, and Byakuran was not inclined to disclose anything without a plan to convince the people he liked that his way of having fun was just fine.

(However, had he properly talked about things to them, they would've tried. They'd also have kept him in the present, and not wander off too far.

Byakuran never got around to sharing this secret until he formed the Gesso. By then, it was too late.)

 _Of a teen with messy black hair and green eyes._

"Sorry," said someone with a cute British accent. "This seat taken? Everywhere else is full."

Byakuran looked up from his handheld console to find a sheepish looking teenager with uncombed hair and dorky spectacles before glancing at the rest of the lecture hall. As a matter of fact, there were still empty spots a few rows down, but who was he to stop someone from joining him in the back row?

"Be my guest," he said, pulling out the chair next to his.

The stranger sighed in relief as he sat down.

"Thanks," the other said, slumping over the table. "Took a while to find the place."

"Hmm?" By now, Byakuran had paused his game and pocketed the device. The lecture hall should've been familiar to even new students when they were already beginning the second semester. Unless - "Just switched programs?" He held out his hand. "I'm Byakuran."

"Harry," the newcomer replied, returning the handshake with a limp grasp, tipping his head just enough to see his new classmate while keeping his cheek pressed to the table. Byakuran tactfully didn't point out how the hand in his was shaking and cool to the touch. Did the new guy skip breakfast or pull an all-nighter when classes barely even started? "Just enrolled, actually. You wouldn't believe how tough it is to get in this far into the school year."

Oh, Byakuran could imagine, but that wasn't what he wanted to focus on. There was something about the other that he couldn't quite put a finger on, and he considered himself an excellent judge of people.

"Not to worry, I believe you." Byakuran propped his chin on the palm of his hand. "So what brings you to our side of the pond? Exchange program?"

"Nope." Harry didn't look too comfortable with this line of questioning, and he leaned back in his chair. "Went here alone. I figured it was a good time as any to explore other horizons."

 _Other horizons._ As if engineering wasn't as hellish as their classmates made it out to be, but spotting the other's eye bags and exhausted pallor made Byakuran inclined to think the Brit knew what hell he was walking into.

"Well, congrats. You're in the right place for it, depending on whom you ask." Byakuran smiled mischievously as he leaned closer to impart a well-known secret. "Mind, I'd recommend waiting until the next lecture before you decide to pack your bags and flee for your sanity. Mr. Pearce is why that group over there petitioned to bring a coffee machine - the guy knows his stuff, but he's about as exciting as a dried earthworm."

That got a huff of laughter. Pleased, Byakuran regaled his audience of one with stories about the other professors, a discussion they actually resumed after Mr. Pearce's lecture before they easily moved on to other topics.

The more the teen relaxed, the more Byakuran could see that while Harry wasn't conventionally attractive, he'd be quite the looker if he changed glasses. It was still hard to pinpoint what exactly caught his attention, but figuring that out soon became secondary the more he found himself enjoying the other's company.

How bright those green eyes shone, even with the terrible glasses.

When he laughed, Harry's tone was refreshingly honest, cutting through the atmosphere like a crackle of lightning illuminating the sky.

 _And a voice._

"Remember this moment." A woman with the flower-shaped mark on her cheek ruffled his hair. This was Aria, Yuni's mother. "Remember who you are and what happiness feels like."

They were in the space In-Between, and she gently nudged him back onto the platform before the train doors closed, separating them both.

"There are those who still care for you."

Byakuran woke up in a cocoon of blazing fire, and knew he was being watched.

 **v. weeks and hours ago**

CEDEF, his memories supplied to him as he strolled around the park, licking the chocolate syrup stain from his thumb. The crepe from the stall was - _still_ was - fantastic, even if he had the disconcerting feeling of simultaneously having eaten from their stall a week and eight years ago.

The funny thing was that that girl, Yuni, could've chosen _not_ to let him in on that secret from far off into the future. She was a stranger to him - the present him. Indeed, the Byakuran of yesterday could've gone on in life ignorant of the special talents he possessed, shifting from one interesting thing to the next, cycling through amusement and boredom like seasonal fashion trends.

Yet she had, because she bore no ill will against this present self of his.

Strange. Most people were less forgiving over insignificant offenses.

He had a gut feeling that most of those people he saw in those dreams wouldn't.

Byakuran turned down the lane, stepping out of the park and to the direction of the convenience store near his apartment. Loading up on double the snacks seemed like a good idea for the next few days of shut-in time. He had a couple of new friends to make, and one of them would be significantly hard to find.

In all his memories, Ha-chan never got around to installing an internet line in that rundown antiquated house of his, no matter how many times Byakuran had asked him.

In whichever world Byakuran had the chance to ask, that was.

(Feeling the echoes of his own death throes was not something he wanted to experience again. Loneliness was such a visceral thing, cutting through the dull mundaneness of involuntary routine and bringing terror into his very soul.

As for defeat... well. Ten years was more than enough time for his head to become that inflated, no?

 _It wasn't that I hated human beings._ The young Vongola's flames were impossibly warm, a bright ember kindled and stoked by the sheer need to make things right. What had this boy seen that he hadn't? Both he and Yuni managed to defy his expectations, in this nearly improbable world that stemmed from a chance meeting. What odds that was. _When I was with other people, I felt warm and fuzzy at times. And I wasn't being pessimistic. I was good at finding things that were fun to do. And I tried my best to have fun. But something about this world just didn't feel right. You know what I mean? Doesn't it make you feel sick?_

Tsunayoshi's resolve never wavered. It was impressive, the future Byakuran had to allow, for a wimpy kid pulling off his first kill.

 _Haha! Your eyes tell me you don't agree at all._

How had he forgotten the simple things?

His body turned to ash with his acceptance of loss.

Game over.)

He wasn't one to wallow in what was now a what-if. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't toss in that extra bag of salted caramel popcorn before checkout.

The lady at the counter greeted him as he left, warmer than she would've with other customers - he was a frequent buyer in those - these - years. Byakuran smiled and waved back.

Throughout from his stroll in the park to re-entering his apartment, the presence of his little CEDEF stalker never went away. To them, he was a potential threat, and he couldn't blame them. He had been a twisted genocidal maniac after all, once upon a time.

All he could do was smile, jam his free hand in his pocket, and whistle. Where did one even begin making up for mistakes they haven't even committed yet?

Byakuran dreamt of a time lost, as he often did these days.

"Engineering really isn't your thing, Ha-chan." In spite of his words, Byakuran beamed at the disaster of a prototype in front of him. Design and assembly errors were part and parcel of invention, but Harry took it to a whole other level even after having the instruction manual memorized.

The way things were going, the Brit would pass the theoretical portion with a decent grade, but miserably fail the practical. Why did he choose to follow Byakuran and Shoichi in taking the robotics elective, again? With Harry's track record in breaking equipment, he was more a perfect fit for destructive testing.

(Not that Byakuran minded. Anything that survived Harry proved to be pretty durable. Just look at Shoichi's prototype scanner - it survived plenty of electrical surges and badly connected wiring.)

"Come off it," Harry grumbled, wiping his prescription goggles with a clean rag. "Not everyone can be like you or Shoichi."

"Not everyone's a genius," Byakuran laughed, hand darting out to swipe away a patch of soot Harry had missed on his cheek. "Not everyone's crammed years' worth of advanced math and physics just to make it to college like you have, either. If I were you, I'd have taken it easy and left it to a bunch of consultants. Don't you agree?"

Joking and the backhanded compliment aside, the last part was a lie on two counts and they both knew it. Harry, for one, was a hands on kind of guy. Byakuran, on the other hand, already read through everyone's notes and preferred to be in charge of planning when they had group projects. Why should his style of running whatever future company he took over be any different? Why should Harry ever think of not involving himself in matters he wanted to dig into?

(For Harry, there was never any doubt Byakuran could do it if he wanted. The other teen was too smart, and very capable if he decided something was worth finishing something. Once upon a time, he'd hoped to see what the other could make of himself, eyes bright as he looked to the future.

Just not in the way everything had turned out.)

"No," Harry said, lightly batting Byakuran's hand away from his face. "Told you why already."

The Brit never advertised his Lordship status, but Byakuran had been too nosy for his own good. Harry mentioned wanting to do something good with the wealth left to him but Byakuran saw another reason: the other teen didn't trust easily.

It wasn't as if Harry was the type to monitor every penny going in and out of his accounts. The publicly traded funds had grown stagnant at one point, probably out of mismanagement.

(A year later, Byakuran would discover how wrong he was. Harry had trust issues for completely different reasons, and he'd died in some lives before Byakuran could even lift a finger.

Or deigned to lift a finger. He wasn't always charitable.

Pinpointing the changes to his own behavior was hard when he'd experienced every single possible consequence of his actions, memories taking on chimeric qualities inside-out.)

"Sure," he shrugged, and nudged Harry out of the lab. Nothing was on fire nor were there any hazardous materials lying about, so they could bother with cleanup later. "Doesn't mean you have to make things harder on yourself. You don't have to stick to that field either - aren't oil magnates always lobbying against that sort of thing?"

Harry shrugged. "Sure they are. Doesn't mean I can't try. Besides..."

"Besides?" Byakuran prompted, leaning in. The hesitant look on the other's face intrigued him. "You don't have any social media accounts to speak of, so it can't be one of those infographics about straws and baby whales that has you guilty."

Harry winced and rubbed his neck, pushing away the sweat-slick hair clinging to his nape.

"I don't," he started, and stopped when Byakuran raised an eyebrow. Harry grimaced, apparently displeased with what he was about to say, and bumped the other's shoulder with his fist. "Oh, fine, you sneak, just stay out of my records. One of my friends is a zoologist who married a colleague. She mentioned something about the Amazon in my last visit and - don't you dare laugh, Byakuran - _the cute little buggers are dying."_

Byakuran managed to keep an accepting smile, never mind that the corners of his mouth were twitching. Harry grew redder with every moment of silence that passed.

How utterly adorable. Too bad the other was skittish with displays of affection during moments like these. Byakuran had his suspicions on why, but never voiced them outright - outside of the anecdotes he shared, Harry tended to be tight-lipped about his past.

"So," Byakuran said generously once he had his fill of flustered Harry, "let me get this straight. You got attached to adorable tiny creatures and now have devoted yourself to their survival. Never mind that the logging and mining problems in that region have nothing directly to do with oil drilling and petrol."

The sharp exhale that followed was music to his ears, as was the embarrassed squeak Harry made when he buried his face in his hands.

"It's a start!"

Byakuran snorted. Unfortunately for Harry, that one sound quickly gave way to full-blown, belly aching laughter.

"Only you, Ha-chan," Byakuran crowed, clutching the wall to support himself. "Wh-why didn't you ask that friend of yours if this was the right place?"

"I did!" Harry scowled and stormed off, his face dirtier from the soot on his palms.

(Magic was no match for the Mare ring, not when Byakuran could see across realities. Contrary to ordinary expectations, Luna Scamander nee Lovegood was also expecting him that day, in his hunt for unique specimens for the Boxes.

He had known she would be.

This was one of the many slips of memory lost to the Byakuran of that future. Yuni, however, entrusted it to his present self, and her sadness at the loss of her friend was palpable in that vision of an eternal summer at long last breaking into autumn.

Nothing would remain.

"You've now no way to turn back," Lovegood said with a calm kind of sadness. With her husband dead and their house in flames, she no longer acted the part of a veteran of a magical war. In fact, he would've doubted his information and visions were it not for how well she fought in defense of this sanctuary. "This cruelty is needless. You know it, yet you persist."

No, she spoke as one whose task was done. As someone who accepted their impending death.

So she'd stalled for time? Nothing unexpected, but that meant the value of this trip just diminished greatly.

Byakuran followed her movement across the room with a cold gaze and said nothing, the earlier accusation slipping off him like water. As far as he was concerned, he acted on what he needed to do. Everything else was just a consequence. All part of having fun, as it were.

When Lovegood reached her husband's corpse and knelt down to pull him in her arms, she spoke in a clear voice that reminded him, oddly enough, of Yuni before the other boss had been poisoned. "He is lost to you this time. It would not have been the case, if you two had decided differently."

 _Him_ again? After all this time?

Laughter broke out of Byakuran. Those words were meaningless. The old ache in his chest had long calcified, or so he believed. Out of sight, out of mind. There was no need for a Lightning who refused to answer his call.

"Of course he's lost," he mocked, gathering Flame in his hand. "Hasn't been home in years. Oh how I wonder where he is."

Byakuran knew. What nagged at his attention was Lovegood's complete lack of surprise and utter lack of vengeance.

How distinctly anti-climactic.

He granted her a swift, painless death for being Harry's friend, whatever that was worth these days, and for the custodianship of whatever else remained under her care.

In the end, the experiments were almost a complete waste of time. Magical creatures were not suitable for regular Box Weapon technology, and that revelation made his scant harvest more bearable: the clearing had been abandoned, and only bones, hair, and refuse remained.

He did, however, get the idea of merging the Boxes with Flame users as a means of bypassing certain limitations. That was something.)

 **vi. what was now at a time of judgment**

These memories were cumbersome, Byakuran thought as he idly bounced a ball of used candy wrappers and rubber bands to the ceiling. He needed something squeezable that wouldn't break, unlike his future self's mind had with all the constant cross-dimensional voyeurism. The act of recalling, in this case, was more like watching a dreadfully long movie with him as the sole member of the audience, the taste of sweet and salty popcorn long stale in his mouth. The heaviness of that future was at odds with how _light_ he felt.

For someone who sought after possibilities, unlimited knowledge was always a tempting prospect. That wasn't the case when he saw not-him dip a little deeper in the pool of worlds, spreading his presence across all his other selves before returning to the main nexus of an original timeline, constantly losing bits and carrying pieces of others with him like a faulty peer-to-peer file transfer protocol with zero file integrity checks.

(The worst part? He knew there was always the chance he'd do it all over again were it not for the contentment residing in his very bones at the moment: the promise of a young Sky whole and well-loved, even if the Arcobaleno were not a fully harmonized set in the traditional sense, brought together by circumstance. Nothing like an artificial sense of completeness a few steps shy of godhood to stave away the boredom, the meaninglessness, the lack of a particular bond -)

Hindsight, as they say, was twenty-twenty. That was what he had now in a manner of speaking - for all that his future self was a strategic genius, seeing his own blind spots made Byakuran more thoughtful.

The funny part was that he somehow felt more mature now, compared to how he drifted in those listless, dull days before the earthquake. He had not been relegated back to square one, but gifted with the inability to turn away from the consequences of old atrocities, and a strange confidence that there were others who would keep him away from that path - if not now, then soon.

And then there was _clean up._ Good grief, the clean up.

Picking up after the mistakes of those who wronged him was never his thing, even if that other person was himself in a now improbable future. His usual - _old_ \- style, after all, was letting those aggravating people bury themselves, and he could relish those brief moments of vindication.

To add insult to injury, older him had met lots of interesting individuals, some of whom he decided he wanted to get along with. What should he say? Hi, I killed you in the future, but that's not gonna happen ever now, I promise? Sure, that'd go over really well.

(Not for the first time, he wondered if he was just high from the sheer optimism in Yuni's flames. Byakuran looked forward to meeting the girl, when the time of Aria's prophecy arrived.)

Seeing is believing was another popular adage. Well, if he couldn't convince them through talking, maybe extending an olive branch would?

He found his first real chance soon enough, outside of sending letters and searching for his Guardians. Byakuran followed the pull of his Flames, and ended up meeting one Yamamoto Takeshi confined to a hospital bed.


	6. the hallows, reprised (i)

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay (rl happened) and shortness of this section - this was originally part of one full chapter that I actually had to rewrite in full, but I figured I might as well release this part while I'm reworking on the other two parts and deliberating on just how much Harry needs to be involved during Tsuna and co.'s actual final confrontation with Bermuda... in the third section ;)

Also - out of curiosity, how many of you guys remember or have read the last manga arc? Please let me know

* * *

 **i. stone**

"He went ahead?"

Harry didn't know why he sounded surprised. Probably because the Byakuran he remembered liked sticking his nose in matters that involved him, and he very much had kept tabs on Yuni one way or another even after he poisoned and dulled her mind, in the future that never was.

The girl, however, looked entirely unbothered by teaming up with her would've-been murderer, and even gave a knowing laugh at his reaction. Beside her, Gamma looked none too pleased, arms crossed as he glared out the window across their side of the aisle. Harry could sympathize - it was one thing to bury the hatchet, and an entirely different thing to do so after having spent years living under the thumb of a megalomaniac, keeping it together for _Yuni,_ no matter how impossible breaking the mind control spell was at the time.

"He did," Yuni confirmed, painfully sweet and bright as she dangled her legs on the seat. She was even younger than when they first met a lifetime ago; at the present, she looked as if the weight of the world was gone from her shoulders. It likely was, when she foresaw that this final conflict might be the end of her term as the Sky Arcobaleno, one way or the other. Death might still be inevitable, but there was a chance her passing would not be determined by her curse. "He really wants to help this time, even if it might be dangerous for him."

She neither elaborated what kind of threat Byakuran would be facing, nor his motivations for doing so. The first was easier to grapple with, after Gamma gave a brisk run-down of why they were wearing those unusual watches. The second, however, made little sense. There was a limit to what Byakuran risked for the sake of having fun. Participating in a battle royale was out of the question, not when the man could've let other people do the dirty work for him if his actual goal was world domination.

He caught Gamma's gaze with the quirk of an eyebrow. The other grimaced and gave an aggravated shrug, likely having already voiced his protests to this arrangement long before Harry had taken a portkey to Italy.

So much for help from that quarter. Not that Gamma might be inclined to share more information after their awkward exchange if greetings at the airport earlier, with Harry smiling sheepishly over Yuni hugging him, not offering his own response to the very pointed head-to-toe examination.

Fine, he was younger than expected. Passing it off as "good genes" wouldn't cut it this time, not when he gave that excuse to Byakuran after the man's unexpected visit to the Giglio Nero's base before the Millefiore alliance. At least he was spared from having that conversation with Yuni herself, thanks to the knowledge her mother had passed on.

"Yuni," he said with difficulty, unable to tell if he was trying to convince her, or _himself._ "Aren't you afraid of him?"

He might've agreed to this trip because it was _time._ However, that didn't mean all his doubts about the situation were cleared up. Plus, for all the complicated feelings he had about Byakuran in general, it was easier to address rather than his own lack of aging. This very scenario, down to the private plane they were now on, was comfortable in its familiarity - the remnants of a past that now only existed in their memories, now breathed to life without the lives of millions hanging on the balance.

"I trust him," she said as she clutched her chest, simple as breathing. "I don't know how to explain it before you actually see how he's changed."

A fair answer for how unsatisfied it left him, a reflection of his own certainty. His gut churned, and for a moment, he really sympathized with Shoichi's complaints about his stomach.

Was he really prepared for this reunion? Like Gamma, there were things he found hard to forget, even if some of those were ill-defined dreams of what could have been. In a way, knowing if he still had reason to hate Byakuran was _simpler_ \- distrust came easily to Harry growing up as he did, going against one authority figure or another and coming through one trial or the other thanks to his friends. Yet here Yuni was, vouching for someone who'd hunted her down, manipulated her, and pushed her to sacrificial death, even though she possessed little to no firsthand knowledge of her own fate in those alternate timelines. Her smile was genuine, and her pleas carried neither bitterness nor fear.

Courage and hope. Two extraordinary strengths that started as dim candle light, wrapped up in the willowy frame of a girl haunted by the prospect of her own death. _We have a chance,_ she had told him in the In-Between, and Harry almost wished both she and Gamma could recall the particulars of that conversation. Were it not for the amber glow in her gaze then and now, it would've been easy to shrug off her positivity and miss what conclusions she's come to as she made her own peace with her erstwhile tormentor. Alas, events in the afterlife had no bearing in the world of the living, and the chance to ask her more about why she remained optimism was lost.

Maybe therein lay the difference in why Harry had more problems with Byakuran, unlike Voldemort. Dealing with the latter was straightforward - it had been about survival at first, then anger, and a final acceptance of understanding, even if he couldn't condone the path Riddle took. Perhaps Yuni's acceptance was the same, though she _did_ take a step further by fully acknowledging her similarities with the man. Between himself and Byakuran, however -

 _"Lightning?° The printout his friend was scribbling on didn't make sense. What was Choice, and what did it have to do with this bizarrely complicated set-up and the weather? "Flames?"_

He exhaled. "Not everyone forgives as easily as you."

 _"It's just part of a game, Ha-chan," Byakuran said. "Don't let it bother you."_

 _For how airy he kept his tone, the dark hunger entering the other's gaze was unmistakable, slipping away the next moment like a trick of the light._

 _Just the other day, they were laughing at constellations they'd made up on the spot, a heavy leather jacket that wasn't his draped over his shoulders, shielding him from the evening chill as he listened to a story about a vain yet wise hydra who constantly had to put up with the antics of a giant red lizard and a large blue fish._

 _Where had his friend gone, if he even knew him at all?_

The Stone weighed heavily on his hand. If he knew what that had been about, sensed that his magic blocked his flames, would things have been different?

 _What had gone wrong?_

"I know," she said, her young voice carrying wisdom beyond age. "So does he, for the both of you."

This time, Gamma started. "Princess -"

"Gamma." Her fingers curled on her chest before relaxing, as if she decided against something. The smile had slipped from her pale face, leaving only determination. "All three of us need to be at the trials. Even him."

A request to get along, for the sake of an outcome she couldn't speak of yet. Gamma's shoulders slumped in defeat before he placed a palm over his heart.

"If it's to help you remove the curse, Princess, I'll do anything."

Harry looked away from the personal moment. In another time and another place, he'd heard such a promise before, albeit worded with a more selfish slant befitting its speaker's arrogance and selfishness.

 _"Say, Ha-chan." Byakuran had been radiant in the suit he wore before donning on his black graduation toga, ready to take on the future. He always did clean up nicely, whether he was in formal attire for certain presentations or in everyday punk fashion, and all Harry could do was stare uncertainly at the hand extended to him. "If you could have anything in the world, what would it be? I'll give it to you."_

He never got a chance to give a proper reply, unsure as he was beyond the vague notion of finding what else to apply himself to, now that he no longer had to just survive.

 _'Not this,' he thought as his vision blurred, the Flame-potent chemical - potion? - flooding his system, cutting through whatever defenses the Hallows afforded him. Whatever the concoction was, it hadn't been something Byakuran whipped out of thin air or created at the spur of the moment. Then, keeping Skull out of trouble had been the last straw..?_

 _"Goodbye for now, Harry."_

 _Something gentle was pressed on the top of his head after he slumped on the table, but it could have been only his imagination, a final, desperate chance to seek warmth before the darkness took him._

Harry closed his eyes. If he was lucky, he could sneak in a nap before they landed in Japan. That portkey from England to Italy was terrible for his already messed-up sleeping schedule.


	7. the hallows, reprised (ii)

**ii. stick**

Sawada had given him a lot to think about. The kid didn't know what Byakuran was up to either, but he said he could trust Yuni, and that was a good direction to take.

Whether that was a step Harry himself could take, however, remained to be seen. His mind was abuzz with Sawada's words calling to him like a promise. _He probably misses you too,_ and maybe that was why his hotel room was lined with feathers, undermining Byakuran's own written promise to wait, but when has that idiot ever been patient?

Should Harry even consider - as in, actually think about it, instead of cycling back to the future - what this version of his old friend might be going through?

By remembering such horrible things and dwelling on what-ifs that could never be answered, was he himself going down an old road, and calling this a second chance in name only?

And now, that third Sky in this alliance was due to return soon. Yuni said it was going to be a short investigation, and Gamma was to accompany Byakuran.

He was running out of time to go.

This wasn't running away. Really. It _wasn't._ He had to sort out a few matters first, including why he originally came to Japan for. Meeting Byakuran face to face for the first time in ages when his own head was a mess wasn't a mistake he was keen on repeating, even if he wouldn't get sedated this time around.

As Sawada went back to his friends, Harry followed Yuni to the backdoor. The foliage around the house was thick enough to dampen the sound of Apparition. Fatigued as he was from lingering jet lag, he'd rather return to his hotel room the soonest possible time. Dusting away any remaining plumage was going to be therapeutic, and he had a feeling he'd want to be well-rested for his meeting with Talbot.

Especially if they ended up starting any rituals early.

If Yuni's wan smile was anything to go by, things were about to get busy soon from her end. Their group had that competition to worry about, and he knew Gamma was dead set on winning if it meant Yuni could live longer. Maybe Harry wouldn't wake up sneezing this time, if that meant Byakuran also had his hands full.

"Yuni?"

"Hmm?"

"This Representative Battle." Harry hesitated. The very name of the game implied conflict. Never mind how he still remembered that Byakuran was a powerhouse - Nozaru and Tazaru were tense and on high alert earlier, and that spoke volumes. This was no simple negotiation. The more he thought about it, the more his senses screamed at him that something was in danger of going very, very wrong, very soon. "How dangerous is it?"

"Very," Yuni said without mincing her words, in spite of how she clutched her hands to her chest.

Something in her tone made him pause. Sure, it could've been the hour, but her shoulders were hunched ever so slightly forward. The familiar sight gnawed at him. She looked just like that once upon a time, donning the robes of her office before anyone knew they'd have an unwelcome visitor and a farce of negotiation.

"You haven't told them," he surmised under his breath.

She squeezed her eyes shut with a guilty shake of her head.

A complicated expression crossed his face, and he had to swallow his unease. There was an outcome she was withholding, and he didn't like it one bit. He was also reminded of that conversation with Luna, and he sighed, running a hand down his face.

Yuni was nervous again and didn't want to worry anyone. The only silver lining here was that if she _had_ foreseen a confirmed death, she'd be more unsettled.

Just how bad _was_ the situation? Even without the Mare ring, Byakuran was still formidable. With him was Sawada, whose sincerity gave Harry the impression that, for all intents and purposes, betrayal wasn't even considered as an option. Furthermore, as Gamma had also explained to him before, death wasn't a necessary requirement for victory - just the destruction of watches.

(In some ways, Sawada's and Yuni's stories were more unbelievable than Harry's, something the Brit was peculiarly appreciative of.)

"You have your reasons," he finally said, still discontent. "I get it, it's a Seer thing. If you need help, though, don't hesitate to ask. You don't have to do this alone, and Gamma will agree with me. Besides, you seem to have good friends in there."

He spared a meaningful glance at the corridor behind them, where they'd parted ways with Tsuna. Perhaps it was hypocritical of him to make that point when Ron and Hermione had to make the same thing clear to him, but he was also mindful of how young Yuni also was.

This contest didn't make sense to him either. Why limit casting the counter-curse to only one person? It was something he'd have to look into when he got back - both Yuni and Skull deserved to be free. The same thing went for the other poor blokes caught up in this mess.

When they reached the back door, Yuni surprised him with a parting hug.

"Stay safe," she said.

"You, too," he said with an exhale, forcing a wan smile. "I'll be back in a few days."

"...un."

Heading deeper into the surrounding foliage, Harry disappeared with an unceremonious _pop!_

He could only hope that whatever it was, it could be something easily dealt with until he got back to help, one way or the other.

In the hotel room, he was greeted by an unopened packet of mallows nested innocently on his pillow. The sight sapped the last of Harry's strength away, and he hit the bed face first. The frame of his glasses cut into his cheeks as his exhausted muscles began the uneasy shift to relaxing, no longer having to support his weight with only tea and sugar for fuel.

 _Byakuran._

If the Hallows wouldn't let him go, perhaps the influence of their creator might persuade them. _The craft to break the cycle,_ Aria wrote all those months ago, _is in your grasp, young Master. Seek it out when the time to break free from the past is amongst us._

Maybe then, he himself could move on from just existing into actually _living._ Whatever the outcome of meeting with Byakuran was would be moot if his own magic worked against it, as it did when he got that person's letter months ago.

 _When you're ready,_ his Sky had written. Harry didn't know if he'd ever be. All he knew was that he had to free himself from this terrible inheritance, or he was no better off than remaining asleep and dependent on life support in that tank.

Maybe then he could see if there was actually something he'd missed all those years ago, and have the chance to make a choice.

Maybe the smile Byakuran would have for him would be free of that terrible, destructive hunger, never mind that he was still probably a teasing wanker, if Gamma's side comments were anything to go by.

 _Maybe -_

* * *

"He'll be gone when we get there, won't we?"

Gamma nearly swerved the car in shock, automatically reached for a gun that wasn't in its holster. Dammit! Had they been spied on earlier?

 _"What!?"_

Byakuran curled up in his seat laughing, slapping his knee with every gust of breath.

"Oh, don't be such a stick in the mud! I just happen to know where he is more often than not these days, and I won't do anything bad to him." He slyly looked at Gamma from the corner of his eye. "Yuni asked you to not look into why he hasn't aged at all, didn't she?"

Gamma refrained from replying. Didn't need to. The clench of his jaw and his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel spoke volumes.

Byakuran hummed and slung an arm over the backrest.

"Well, don't worry about it too much." He glanced out the window. The sky was beautiful in the sunset, a lively orange bleeding into rose red and dark violet. "For him, it's kinda like Omerta."

"...tch." It was not the first time that day Gamma looked this frustrated. He wore the same expression when Yuni told him to go with Byakuran to look into what Team Verde was up to. "Don't tell me he told you."

"Of course not," Byakuran replied, and maybe he was a touch nostalgic. Torikabuto's previous letter delivery had been illuminating in a lot of ways, helpful in piecing together what he knew about his original would've been Lightning Guardian. "Not this Harry, anyway, and I don't remember all the details from the others. In some worlds, I wasn't really listening."

If there was one thing he learned after that first step in healing Yamamoto Takeshi, it was that no one really bought into whatever innocence his present self might possess. As far as Byakuran was concerned, he didn't have to prove or debunk anything about himself, though he _could_ accept he was always in danger of going down certain paths if he got bored enough.

That was enough for him to accept his future self's actions as part of his own past. He _was_ that guy, and Byakuran could now move beyond that ceiling he built over himself this time around: the mere point that no one knew what to expect of him was a golden opportunity.

 _I can't take what he - no, what_ I _did in the future._ He said as much in reply to Zakuro's challenge, and knew that Kikyo and Bluebell were listening in. Ghost's appearance and subsequent leeching off their flames was a sore topic, and his Storm was right to accuse him of throwing them under the bus that time. _It's up to you to decide if you can trust me again or not. After all, the only thing I can promise is that things won't be boring._

Having fun didn't mean he couldn't get along with the other people on the board.

(He'd still think the same later that evening, hovering above the rented villa back-to-back with Sawada Tsunayoshi. Getting shot by Colonello wasn't nice, but at least Gamma was over a major sore point, and Byakuran could at least spare Yuni the grief of crying over any corpses tonight.

At least he healed fast. If only he could recreate exactly what he did during that Yamamoto kid's treatment.)


	8. the hallows, reprised (iii)

**iii. cloak**

His second time hearing from Tsuna wasn't a happy occasion.

For half an hour he sat at Talbot's side, hidden under the Invisibility Cloak. For half an hour, the blood steadily drained from his face, and a rattling chill settled in his bones. To hear of the fate of the Arcobaleno - of _Yuni_ and _Skull_ \- and the candidates chosen to take their place, including Byakuran...

It was unspeakably cruel.

Living batteries, consuming both Flame and life force. It was easy to connect the reason for their transformation from there, even if Sawada himself had not figured it out: the Arcobaleno's very forms were reverted to toddlers for the sake of conserving energy, and wasn't that cruelly efficient?

He wanted to throw up.

The Invisibility Cloak slipped from his head after Sawada took off to the skies, a blazing comet heading off to rally one last desperate stand. Harry was motionless. His hands shook, the black veins stemming from the Stone standing out on his unhealthy skin.

In one fell swoop, he might lose his friend, his cousin, and would-be Sky. Only a scant few hours remained until dawn, when Sawada would meet everyone for a last stand.

Harry had a feeling the person ultimately responsible for this mess - _Checkerface_ \- wasn't inclined to leave witnesses alive once this unholy ritual was done.

Assuming any of them survived Bermuda and his quest for vengeance.

"What is he," he croaked as Talbot stood up with the help of his cane.

"Young," Talbot said, for everyone was younger than him, "and desperate. The same perhaps could be said of this Checkerface, though he is hidden to me until it is his time to move on. Now, come, young Peverell. This is something you and the Hallows can assist me with."

Harry looked at him, eyes wide behind round glasses.

"But my magic doesn't work with Flames!" He held up his hand with the Stone, looking a touch wild before he flicked his fingers at the floor next to him. The Concealment spell lifted, revealing the draft of an array they were working on before Sawada arrived. The script Talbot used, scratching the symbols on garden dirt for Harry to copy, was from an age long forgotten to humans. "Isn't that what _this_ is about?"

"After hearing of Bermuda's story, I've come to suspect it's not that simple." The Craftsman gave him a kind smile, eyes obscured as always by a black strip of cloth, and placed a weathered hand on Harry's head: the very same one he used to forge items infused with magic and fire. "It is not that Flames are inherently incompatible with magic, but that two of the Hallows - the Death Stick and the Stone - have become foci for greed, resentment, grief, and rage. In possessing you, their host, they may have awakened your dormant aspect of Lightning, but at the cost of affecting you with their corrupted energy."

When his decidedly pale visitor did not interrupt, Talbot continued: "Death may be everywhere, but It is not omniscient. Neither is the future is not my domain. Instead, Death is transformation, and the consequences of such have never been mine to determine. The same, it seems, applies to the gifts your ancestors received. The black Flame the Stone possesses might not be coincidental after all."

Stunned, Harry fell silent, mind spinning from the new possibility. Was this why Talbot had not commented when Harry revealed to him earlier the Stone's changed reaction to Byakuran's Flames?

Talbot looked out the open screen door, beyond the night sky above the garden of his current residence. It was cold up here in the mountains, the wind sighing peacefully on forest green.

"Indeed," he said to himself after a while, stroking his chin with thought, "when he absorbed Ghost's power and his form destabilized, the young Gesso's Flames turned into pitch once young Vongola did away with his first set of wings. Furthermore, there's the matter of his unusual choice of Mist... yes. It might be better for you to look into it for yourself while I make the necessary preparations for this new request."

The longer the older man spoke, the more Harry felt out of his depth. Connecting the outcome of that particular battle from the future seemed reasonable, but Torikabuto's involvement was a mystery, to say the least. "What -"

Then Talbot touched his forehead, and the influx of sensory information made Harry's blood to ice in his veins. Being keyed into the estate's wards was but a footnote. There, part of the conflict Sawada failed to mention earlier due to his lack of time, was Byakuran, a fallen bird poached from the heavens, the wind doing little to break his free fall. He could hear Yuni calling her Fellow Sky's name, Sawada blazing a trail of orange to confront the threat to their group, Shoichi and the Gesso Sun pouring their Flames to speed up healing before carting off the injured to the hospital

Byakuran would survive the night, but was that enough given _who_ they were about to confront at the end of this twisted game?

"Go." The craftsman handed Harry his knapsack and secured the Cloak around the younger man's shoulders. "Return once you've made your delivery. We have much to finish before the appointed hour."

* * *

When he packed a supply of emergency potions for his trip to Japan, this wasn't how he envisioned they'd be used.

The hospital was still busy as he walked through its halls - he hadn't dared Apparate, when this facility's security was prepared to deal with any perceived threats, given their usual clientele. Rather, he walked from the parking lot, following the path Talbot gave him.

Unlocking the door was easy with the Death Stick. He stepped past a napping Zakuro, a silent sentinel seated by the door with his arms and legs crossed, and headed for the center of the room. By the window, Kikyo mirrored his fellow Guardian's pose, his long hair illuminated by the moonlight. Daisy lay on the spare bed, curled around his patchwork stuffed rabbit. Byakuran, predictably, had fallen asleep with an open book on his chest and a bag of marshmallows by his hand, and Bluebell was curled up by his side, her tight grasp on the Sky's shirt revealing her reluctance to part from the one she looked up to as a sibling.

They all made for a rather cozy image. No doubt the illusion would shatter once they awoke and resumed their usual lively bickering.

In some ways, their return to Byakuran was part of an answer to Harry's quandary. They, too, had been betrayed, but that had not stopped them from flocking back to the Sky who called them.

Inhaling softly, Harry made sure the Cloak was secure around his form as he placed the vials carefully on the night stand, careful to avoid making the glass clink. A note, signed _H,_ was written in his usual chicken scratch. Byakuran would know whom it was from when he woke, assuming one of the others didn't dispose of the potions first out of suspicion.

At least, that was what he figured. He'd only ever met some of them in passing, and Harry had never before considered what being part of their set actually meant. Perhaps, once this trial was over.

Before he left, he cast his lingering gaze at Byakuran. Not a trace of cruelty was left on his peaceful expression, nor was he caught in one of the restless dreams he often had during their University years. Like this, he looked painfully young, and Harry caught himself moments before the tips of his fingers touched Byakuran's soft cheek, crushing the sharp pang of loneliness in his chest.

If Talbot was right - _if,_ because Harry didn't want to hope yet - his Flames were now active. If he could finally part from the Hallows, or their effect on him could be diminished...

Harry's breath was unsteady when he forced himself a few steps back, want warring with necessity.

It was not yet time.

(There was not a time when his desire to belong ever stopped.)

Had he bothered to check the cover of the book before leaving, Harry might've made a sound loud enough to wake the room's occupants.

There, embossed in dark blue letters between Byakuran's long fingers, was its title: _The Tales of the Beedle and the Bard._

* * *

The Cloak hid its wearer from the living and the dead.

Torikabuto was neither. He had no need for food or sleep, and subsisted only on the life force the body he possessed provided. Such was his nature as a cursed mask, flitting from host to host over the centuries. Those who possessed Flames or magic only added to his longevity: his own taste of ambrosia.

"You had a visitor, Byakuran-sama."

The wraith extended a long, crooked finger to the night stand once his master awoke.

"Hmm?" Byakuran yawned, running a hand through his hair. Tsunayoshi's little speech included an invitation for a bigger meeting at his house. It sounded interesting, though the hour was woefully early for the sake of wrapping up before the Arcobaleno caught wind of it. "Who was - _ah._ "

He already guessed even before taking the note. The shape of those vials were a dead giveaway, and Torikabuto's trip to Wizarding Britain was enough for him to compare that community's general state of affairs in this world to the others.

Still, Byakuran couldn't help but chuckle as he unfolded the paper, taking in the familiar writing that detailed instructions for his new medicine routine.

"Byakuran-sama?" Bluebell. The girl stirred and rubbed the dust from her eyes, careful to not elbow the injured man's chest. "Who..?"

"Someone who might meet us soon," he said, tucking the note in his book with a cheerful whistle.

At long last.

Ha-chan finally seeking him out was all the more reason to not lose to Bermuda.


End file.
